Previews

Viva Pi¿ata

Rare's overtly marketable new intellectual property is set to hypnotize children later this year. Let's take a look at Pi¿ata Island.

Spiffy:

The farming, island construction, and piñata management elements of the game could provide a fun, compelling experience.

Iffy:

While still not finished, the game is currently suffering from frame rate issues; kids will be griefed by players like myself.

Rare has been working on its latest intellectual property since 2003, and their work has just recently borne fruit. Thanks to a partnership with 4Kids, Viva Pi¿ata will launch this September as a children's television show, and the Xbox 360 game will launch shortly thereafter, just in time for the holidays. The idea behind the property is that Pi¿ata Island was a magical land where Pi¿atas with the shapes and behaviors of different animals live, frolic, and go on adventures together. While the television show will cover the daily misadventures and situational comedy aspects of life on the island, the video game will allow players to set up a plot of land to their tastes, and attract a variety of different pi¿atas to live happily ever after.

Starting the game, you're given a plot of land and tasked with developing it in order to build a pi¿ata paradise. You'll have a variety of tools at your disposal to accomplish this task, starting with a lowly shovel. Even the basic shovel was graphically designed in an interesting way, with an animated golden cap on the end in the shape of a face, opening and closing his mouth with every dig or slap on the ground. You'll have colorful animated sequences with every action you take, including the sprinkling of seeds on the ground, and the watering of your crops. You have absolute freedom to form your island as you wish, so you can dig up holes to create ponds and watering holes, and drop white picket fences, either for decoration, or to separate small plots for each of your different breeds of pi¿ata.

Once you've begun developing your land, in fact soon after preparing a small area of soil, you'll get a visit from the lowliest of pi¿atas, the wurm. Once you have the little papier-m¿ch¿ critter move onto your land as a resident, you'll attract its natural predator the sparrowmint. As the cycle continues, with pi¿atas moving onto your island in ascending food-chain order, you'll have to make hard decisions about life and death, which is pretty cool since that sort of thing builds character in young children. If you're totally ruthless, you can even breed a pair of animals and feed their young to another, hungrier pi¿ata. While you won't have to do this sort of thing, it's pretty amazing that you're free to play at God with the lives of your island's candy-filled inhabitants.

A visit to the post office will allow you to access the game's ambitious Xbox Live functionality. Every pi¿ata has a small tag attached to them, usually somewhere on the posterior, and this tag can be customized to be unique to each player. If you decide to send a pi¿ata to a friend, the tag will remain, meaning you'll be able to leave your mark on islands across the world. If you're the griefing type, you can even stick a malicious pi¿ata in a crate, like the rabid macaraccoon, to an unsuspecting friend (or enemy). Once they open the crate, that dangerous pi¿ata can wreak havoc, spilling poisonous sour candy on the other island and infecting the locals. Note to kids: don't take candy or suspicious crates from strangers.